Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello guys and gals!


I am new to this forum or well i have been stalking around here unregistered for over a year from time to time and this year i have planed to make my Aquaponic ideas real instead of just drawings and calculations on the computer.

First problem i had before was that i lived in an apartment but that is now fixed since i am renting a house with lots of outdoor space and the plan is that in one year buy this house, and if i cant afford it then ill wait a bit more.

Have had aquariums back and forth and always loved growing my own things be it vegetables, flowers or fruits. So when i first found out about these aquaponic things i was really in to it from the start, but did not have the space for it.

So where am i now? Well 2 days ago i was at a local pet well mostly fish and other aquarium pets and noticed he had some "Mozambique Tilapia RED" and i have been thinking about putting some more fish in my 250L aquarium so i bought 10 of them not sure if these are good "Mozambique tilapia" since they are almost white except for some red/orange color a bit here and there on the body, guess they are some hybrid sort?

Well they are now anyways in my aquarium and swimming around and eating like crazy and if i put down a finger they are there trying to eat on it. At the moment they are around 8cm in size and really fun to look on when they cruise around in the water.

I have also started to build a little indoor system that will grow herbs, lettuce and smaller vegetables in the kitchen and have a smaller aquarium at the bottom. Loosely based on the ELIOOO ideas and designs found at http://eliooo.com.

This spring and summer i also plan to build a greenhouse (sample design in the attached image) which will be a home for fish and plants in the future. Will take a while since the plan is to build it on my own with a bit of help from friends a family but i hope to prepare the ground this spring and maybe start the framework in summer.

Well other than that i live in the cold hard land of Sweden in the outskirts of Trollhättan (Everyone knows about Saab i guess?) and i am 26 years old, work as a CNC Machinist/programmer and have a great girlfriend and a 5 year old/young son.

Ill be back with more things about my "small" indoor system in a separate thread but if you got any questions for things to share please do so.

Regards from Sweden,
Tom aka ViPER^-

Welcome Viper!!!

Hi Viper
Welcome
You might want to consider a specie suitable for the climate you (we) live in ?
Here a swedish pioner in Scandinavian ap http://www.rainbowfish.se/index.html

cheers

The future plan is to keep a better suited fish for the climate in Sweden when it´s time to grow the fish in the greenhouse since i guess keeping it around 20-27 in the winter here will not be cheap. On the other hand my house is heated by a wood furnace and i buy this wood cheap from the landowners around here and my greenhouse will be insulated and only have 1 southfacing wall with windows rest will be insulated but anyways.

But i am not sure what fish i can get that will grow fast to eating size and reproduce in a tank system? Any good ideas here?

But thanks SolTun for the tip, remembering me about that great site again since i have lost it a long time ago.

Regards,
ViPER^-

Yo Viper, welcome to the forum. Check out this guy's passive solar greenhouse. It looks sort of like what you are doing? Luck to you on your system build. Keep us posted.

No sorry, I don't think there is a specie here with the above listed requirements.
Salmonids and perch are easy to source dough, both domesticated and wild and are easy to raise, in our climate.
Were as the tropical/subtropical species are costly (heat/energy) and redicioluse cheap to buy for food.

How about crayfish ? thaught about that, like redclaws can you legaly source/keep dose in Sweden ?

cheers

Well there are a type of crayfish "Astacus astacus" which was found in lakes and rivers i Sweden but now days it has been over run by the "Signal Crayfish" that also brought crayfish plague and is now invasive so there are some work on getting the Astacus population back to where it once was before.

There are some really good docs actually that can be found on http://www.astacus.org/ (swedish tough) and they have some things about how to grow these crayfish in ponds or even in tanks in the basement. Think some of the information also is available in Norwegian.

So yeah i have been thinking about it, but well there is a long road ahead and i guess i have to start somewhere.

Regards,
ViPER^-

Hi Viper !
My name is Fredrik Lübbing, and I also live in Sweden, Kopparberg. I am also planning on an Eco-House (Solar Cells, domestic Wind Mill, Kitchen Stove, Accumulator tank and a new efficient Steam Engine generator (3 kW), with an Aquaponic system. If you like, I would love to get in contact with you.
I am a physicist, teaching Ma and Fy for the moment, but I also have great contacts with the farming school Kvinnersta outside of Örebro.
Regards Fredrik